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“I’m sorry I left before you woke up this morning,” he tells me with a sheepish shrug. “After the way you acted the last time I woke up at your house, I didn’t think you’d be too keen on me doing it again. Didn’t really feel like getting kicked in the balls this time instead of just getting the brush-off.”
All I can do is laugh through my tears, and I launch myself at him again.
When his arms come around me and he buries his face in the side of my neck, I say the words I should have said to him last night.
“Don’t ever leave me again,” I whisper brokenly as the tears start falling once more.
“Are you kidding me? I’d be a fucking fool to walk away from you,” Dean whispers right back, letting me know those words he said to me the night we looked at photo albums were really about him. “Besides, I signed an eighteen-month contract on the cottage a few places down from Palmer and Birdie the other day. I’ve got commitments I can’t break now. You’re stuck with me for at least a year and a half.”
“Wait, has Mom been sad all day because she thought Uncle Dean left?” Bodhi suddenly pipes up from the back picnic table.
“What the hell did you think we’ve been talking about all day?” Tess asks her husband.
“I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying attention. I could have told you he didn’t leave. I helped him pick out furniture online when he showed me the place earlier.”
“For fuck’s sake, Bodhi!” Wren shouts at him, while I ignore all of them and just enjoy the man with his arms wrapped around me, who doesn’t seem like he ever wants to let me go.
“I’m sorry I didn’t ask you to stay,” I admit to him as Wren makes Tess and Bodhi get up from their picnic table and follow her inside the building.
Dean pulls back to look down at me again, locking his hands together at my lower back, in no rush to let me move away from him.
“I knew damn well you were too stubborn to ask me.” Dean smiles, making me narrow my eyes at him. “And then I realized you didn’t have to. I knew from the minute you first rolled your eyes at me that I was never gonna leave. I didn’t say anything, because I was afraid you wouldn’t want me to, and I’d piss you off by sticking around. But you eventually told me in your own way what you wanted… so I listened.”
I guess I did speak loudly enough.
“What about your job? And all of the places you have to go?”
Dean brings one of his hands up between us to brush my hair out of my eyes and tuck it behind my ear before locking his fingers behind my back again.
“I can do my job anywhere. I figured you knew that. I just need a garage and to get all my tools shipped here to me. I only travel to all those places and hand deliver the clubs because I have nothing else to do, not because I have to.”
I close my eyes and drop my forehead to his chest when his explanation seems so obvious, and I curse myself for not talking to him about it sooner and just making assumptions. After overhearing him talking to Palmer about something he needed to “tell Laura later” in the same breath that he spoke about his work commitments, I naturally assumed he wanted to tell me about leaving to travel to his next job, not about renting a cottage.
“I’m sorry I made you cry.” He pauses to kiss the top of my head, and I lift my face away from his chest to look up at him as he continues. “In hindsight, it definitely wasn’t the best decision to give you some space today.”
“I deserved it.” I shrug. “I should have just talked to you. I should have told you…” I have to pause to take another deep breath, knowing I can’t stay quiet about anything with him anymore. I have to be honest, even if I might not like his answer. “I should have told you I was in love with you, but I was—”
My words are cut off by Dean’s lips landing on mine. He kisses all my sadness away, and he kisses all my fears away, and he tells me without saying a word that he loves me too.
He pulls back just enough to look at me when he ends the kiss. “Just remember when you get pissed at me again that you said it first.”
“You’re so annoying.” I roll my eyes at him as he dips his head and kisses my cheek.
“Yeah, well, you fell in love with your fling.”
“So did you,” I quickly reply with my own grin.
“Best fucking decision I’ve ever made.”
“Yo! You guys almost finished out there?” Bodhi shouts, sticking his head out of the open serving window. “I gotta take a shit, and Wren says we can’t leave until you guys do.”
“There’s a bathroom in here, you idiot,” I hear Wren say from inside the building.
“Do you really want the smell of my dump taking up this entire small room? You have no idea what I’ve eaten today.”
Dean and I finally let go of each other, and he bends down to pick up the bucket of water for me, grabbing my phone that I dropped at the same time and handing it to me.
“You sure you really want to do this? I come with a lot of baggage,” I remind him, pointing my thumb over my shoulder at the grown-ass children inside the stand, arguing loudly about shit. Literally.
